Moving to Webkit/Blink was a good idea, it will ensure great compatibility and allow the Opera devs to focus on browser features rather than engine development. They just need to get the features back in there.

Presto is great generally, but is simply not compatible with some of the latest web designs. As long as you don't use Gmail, Google Docs, Facebook or Yahoo's equivalent sites, it can serve you well. On the other hand, that is quite a price to pay for most people.

On the other hand, Presto uses less system resources (processor, RAM, etc,) ... anyone using a system more than about 5 years old may have trouble with WebKit.

I can't particularly fault Opera Software for the decision. It is hard to justify maintaining a browser primarily for use on older systems from a business perspective. Keeping Presto for use on the lower-end phones is viable, but on desktops and laptops it is a rather small niche, and hence not a great moneymaker.

Nothing against Presto but it has need to be done as it is, Web is not the same as 10 years ago.

This is not true. Presto is much better engine than Webkit in terms of speed. I say - If Opera Software ASA don't want to contribute to the internet with their engine anymore, they at least should make the engine open source, so the community can continue it's development.
Yes., internet is not the same as 10 years ago. Now we are oppressed by Google propaganda. Just open www.google.com and you will see.Adverts in so many free programs to install Chrome, some of them event don't bother to ask you, but install it without your knowledge or option to cancel it's installation. It's worse than the times of IE6.

I cant see opera future as another chromium clone. Opera was Great because of differents
When someone need chrome - should install chrome
it's sad, that it looks like in nearest future there will be only one so called "BEST" engine (maybe 2 - IE) with its bugs, spying,
It sounds for me like - "dont choose - we've done it for you", "We know what is the best for you"

I dont give a crap about the engine (apart from maybe that it should not be trident) as long as UX works for me. In Op15+ UX does not work at all for my needs so I am staying with Op12 for now, but it is a purely UX-based decision and not based on engine.

Presto is great generally, but is simply not compatible with some of the latest web designs.

I think Presto have less and less compatibility problems. Web designers and especially the designers at big websites are using web standards, aren't they? Presto should handle it unless the Presto programmers do something wrong.

By the way I don't like how the web have changed. I don't know what is causing it, if it's something called Ajax or just Javascript, but so many websites have become slow on old hardware. I often suspect it's caused by huge amounts of Javascript, but why is that necessary? Just look at Outlook.com. Before when it was Hotmail it operated MUCH faster. Outlook webmail is slow as syrup because so much CPU processing is needed. Btw, Flash content is not activated until I click it, and I also have adblock.

Originally posted by opera1216fan:

I have 6 years old PC and presto running really faster lol.

I have a 12 year old laptop! Presto is still running fast enough on many sites (though not as fast as in the past), but many sites have becomes slow.

"Fit to width" - No other engine has ever been able to flow a page on unconventional screen layouts with anything even approaching the slickness of Presto. With Smartphones becoming such an important market and being used for more and more for accessing the web, ditching the engine with that advantage is nuts.

I've used every version of Opera since 1996, when I begrudgingly semi-defected from Atari to Windows.

Presto-based Opera had become overloaded with features, a number of them confusing rather than helping our users — you can’t imagine how many reports we’ve gotten from users telling us that their favorite site was broken, simply because they had turned on fit-to-width by accident, for instance.

you can’t imagine how many reports we’ve gotten from users telling us that their favorite site was broken, simply because they had turned on fit-to-width by accident, for instance.

Pesala and I don't really have to imagine - we see the posts regularly here in the forums. There are certain types of content which FTW breaks, horribly. It most definitely does have its uses, but on a desktop system you shouldn't have it as an "always on" setting. Site preferences though ...

you can’t imagine how many reports we’ve gotten from users telling us that their favorite site was broken, simply because they had turned on fit-to-width by accident, for instance.

The same would apply:

you can’t imagine how many reports we’ve gotten from users telling us that their favorite site was broken, simply because they had turned scripting or cookies off. So we decided to remove such confusing rather than helping features.